The TellTale Hatch
by pacejunkie
Summary: Desmond's very vivid conscience is driving him to madness.  A Poe Pastiche.


**Title:** The Tell-Tale Hatch

**Rating:** PG-13/T

**Summary:** Desmond's very vivid conscience is driving him to madness. A Poe Pastiche.

**Characters:** Desmond, Kelvin, Locke

**Word Count: **1,820

**Disclaimer:** I just love the public domain. This is based on The Tell-Tale Heart written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1850. It's more than a hundred years old and belongs to us all. However, I still do not own Lost.

LIES! Mad, you say? You call me mad? Why, brother I have never thought more clearly than on the night that my fate was sealed. Until you have lived my life, seen what I have seen, you will never know what it is to be trapped, to feel hunted, longing for release until your lungs are fit to burst. The madness lay not in me, but in my demons, crying out to be exorcised, and I all too happily obliged.

Three years I lived in the station called the Swan, like a miner sealed in the bloody cracks of the earth, searching for light. Dutifully I performed my one and only task, pressing a button and saving the world over and over and over again. Kelvin had never wronged me. We had had no quarrel or insult. He had no riches for me to covet. But always he watched me. Aye! That was it. His eyes, protruding and bloodshot, were ever watching. It was as if I could feel his cold stare boring its way into the back of my head like earthworms. I could sense him from behind and from every room, causing my skin to crawl and my pulse to race. Eventually I began to feel his stare even in my sleep from the upper bunk of the room we shared. And so, over time – very gradually – I made up my mind that I would rid myself of that stare forever.

Now at this point you may fancy me mad, but you would think differently had you seen me in those days. I proceeded with such caution, such care, that Kelvin never suspected that my intentions toward him had changed. I continued to beg to be let out like I always had, but I backed down easier than before, never losing my temper. Kelvin would escape for hours at a time into the mysterious jungle, while I waited at home and hearth like a dutiful spouse. But at night, when he slept, I watched him. You would have laughed to have seen me, waiting for the darkest hours of the night, creeping slowly – very, very slowly, down from my bunk to spy him below. My light source was none other than the artificial moon glow filtering through the blinds which covered an equally artificial window. I turned the blinds until only a sliver of light was revealed, just enough for me to see those eyes, hidden behind heavy lids like a velvet curtain. Ha! Would a madman have been as careful as this? I proceeded in this manner for seven long nights, always at the same time, but with his eyes always closed, I found it impossible to do what I must, for as I said it was not Kelvin that vexed me, but his Evil Eyes. He never suspected that I watched him while he slept.

Upon the eighth night I grew more cautious than usual in my nighttime wanderings. I felt particularly powerful, charged and alert, scarcely able to contain myself with the knowledge that here I was, creeping down again, and poor Kelvin hadn't a clue to the thoughts in my head. I chuckled at the idea, and perhaps he heard me, for he moved suddenly, as if startled. I froze for an instant, but never did I entertain the thought of turning back to my bed. Instead I continued on, lowering myself to the floor where he lay beneath my feet.

I reached over to crack the blinds when Kelvin sprang up in the darkness.

"Who's there?" he cried.

I kept still and said nothing, but he stayed upright, listening. Finally a sound rose from his throat. It was the sound of terror that emanates from the pit of one's soul. I knew that sound all too well, for it had welled up from my own soul on many a lonely night while the innocents of the world slept. It was the sound of the terrors of my imaginings. Although I laughed inside I also pitied Kelvin, his fears growing around him like ivy as he tried in vain to comfort himself with perfectly rational explanations for the sounds closing in on him. But it was all for nothing as Death was now stalking him with the lust of an animal for its wounded prey. It was at this moment that I believe he first felt my presence.

When I had waited an eternity, I resolved to open the blinds the slightest amount, until a single dim ray, like the thread of a spider, shot out from the crevice and fell full upon those accusing eyes.

They were open – wide, wide open – and I grew furious as I gazed back at them. Nothing else surrounded those liquid pools, for I had directed the light, as if by instinct, on their shining orbs alone. They appeared to float in the darkness.

My senses heightened to a fever pitch, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound that I knew well. It was the beating of Kelvin's heart. A man couldn't share close quarters underground with another man for three years and not become intimately familiar with the sound. I knew it as well as the beating of my own, at times unable to distinguish between them. But on this night, the sound enraged me, whipping me into a frenzy with a hunger no feast could satisfy.

But still I restrained myself, scarcely breathing. I watched as the ray continued to illuminate the eyes and the hellish drumbeat of the heart grew louder, quicker, more insistent. Kelvin's terror must have been extreme! I fought to keep my own panic at bay as the sound increased in its intensity to the point where I feared the organ would explode in his chest. There was only one way to make the sound stop.

Kelvin's hour had come.

With a loud yell, I leapt upon him. He shrieked once, but only once. I dragged him to the floor and bashed his head into the iron bed frame. Then I smiled, to find the deed done. To my displeasure the heart beat on for several more minutes but it was fainter, less powerful, and I knew already I had done the right thing. Finally it ceased altogether. Kelvin was dead, stone dead. I placed my hand over that wicked heart and felt for a sign of life. There was none. His eyes would trouble me no more.

If you still think me mad you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. My options were sorely limited. I could not enter into the jungle, having learned for three years to avoid it for fear of infection, but the corpse could not live with me, so it had to be disposed of somehow. With a large blade, I worked quickly to dismember the corpse, limb by limb.

When I was finished, I placed the parts in a sack and brought the whole lot to the room with the computer. Beneath the equipment lay a trap door, with a crawlspace beneath. I thought back with a smile as I recalled that it was Kelvin that first showed me that crawlspace, as he lay drunk with the failsafe key contemplating his own demise. Ironic, though it was, I ceased my mental wanderings and returned to my task, lowering the body to the dirt floor below and replacing the machine on top. When I was finished I stepped back and admired my work; the concealment was so clever, so cunning, that no human eye – not even _his_ – could have detected anything amiss. There was not the slightest blood spot or stain left behind. I had too been too wary for that. Ha!

It was shortly thereafter, though still quite dark, when a fierce rumbling shook my subterranean home. I lowered my spyglass and peered in, to discover a large hairless man making his way down the corridor. His timing disturbed me more than his appearance, although that should have concerned me equally, since I had believed myself alone. He appeared unarmed, his eyes searching as he walked like an explorer. Once again my options were few, but I decided to greet him openly -- for what did I have to fear?

He entered the computer room where he found me standing. I introduced myself and remained calm, patiently wading through his questions. He called himself John, and he had been investigating a hatch he had found aboveground when he thought he heard a scream.

"Aye," I said. "That scream was my own, in a dream. I live alone, you see and sometimes it gets a bit frightening."

In my enthusiasm, I gestured for him to sit in the rolling chair by the computer that had been my life for three years, while I took the seat inches away from the very spot beneath which dwelled the corpse of my victim.

I felt completely at ease as we chatted like two old schoolmates over tea. But before long, I found myself wishing he was gone. My head ached and there grew a ringing in my ears, but still the bloke sat and chatted. The ringing became more distinct. I talked more freely to dispel the sensation, but it continued and gained strength until all at once I realized that the noise was not within my ears at all.

No doubt I was growing pale, but I continued speaking, my voice raising just an octave, yet the sound increased. What could I do? It was a low, dull quick sound that I knew as well as the sound of my own heart. I gasped for breath, I spoke more quickly, but the noise steadily increased. At the same time I could tell that my companion had heard nothing. He appeared more concerned about my behavior and perplexed over the cause. I arose and argued in an even higher key with violent gesticulations, but still the noise increased. I paced the floor, I raved, I swore. Oh God, what could I do? I picked up the chair on which I had been sitting and smashed it into the floor, but the sound persisted louder and louder as if it were drawing nearer to me, writhing beneath the floor to the source of its discontent. Was it possible that John heard nothing? No, he heard it. He had to. What was more he suspected. He _knew_! He was making a mockery of my horror as he sat and looked on idly. I longed to be free of the agony; anything was more tolerable than this! I could bear the man's hypocritical smirks no longer! I must either scream or die! Louder, louder, _louder_!

"Enough!" I shrieked. "I admit the bloody deed, brother! Lift up the floor! Here! Here! It's the beating of his hideous heart!"


End file.
